


The Star of the Sea

by kurgaya



Series: Principle Winds [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Established Relationship, Fluff, Other, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 17:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7447639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurgaya/pseuds/kurgaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The captain rolls over and pleas, breakfast? and then ducks away from Zee’s exasperated sigh (but fond and knowing, too, most importantly) to fish around for his clothes.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Don’t tell me you eat as much as last time,” Zee grumbles.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Star of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Direct sequel to Compass Rose. Once again, I've realised how challenging keeping these two as IC as a post-canon, reincarnation, gender-changed AU will allow is :P
> 
> Written for [zolu-week](http://zolu-week.tumblr.com/) day 1 "date".

 

“You’re gorgeous, you know,” Luffy sighs, twirling a curl of his lover’s rose-gold hair around a finger. His skin is pulsing scarlet, beating an angry, perfect punch-purple from within the tight coil, but the pain is a reminder that he’s alive, and the touch of the other body against his own is a reminder - a cruel, beautiful reminder - that he hadn’t always been.

“I mean,” he goes on whimsically, smiling easily as Zee breathes a soft noise into the pillow she’s claimed. Sleeping is a pastime she seems to relish in this life just as she had in her previous, but sprawled out here as though she could become one with the bed they tousled last tonight, waking _Zoro_ was definitely easier than rousing the gold-tinted - _snoring_ \- Aurora that Zee has become. “You always were pretty - uhh - yeah, you were - you were pretty stunning.”

Luffy laughs with an awkward note, embarrassed as the man _before him_ never had been with such rosy declarations of affection. Zee deserves to be flattered though - praised, even, because Luffy has already seen a _sadness_ within her, a _loneliness_ that he knows lingers on from their previous time; the time when Zoro had lived on without him. Luffy can do _that_ much for her - it won’t make up for the pain he caused, unintentionally so, but it’s a start at bridging this space between them, just as this moment, he and his first mate alone, is the start of the life in which they will sail together again - all of them, one day.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” comes a mumble from somewhere smothered in the duvet, and Luffy laughs again as he notices one bleary eye squinting up at him. “But I definitely remember you being more…”

Zee trails off, yawning around the thought, and then chuckles when she catches sight of Luffy’s dramatic pout.

“What, what? I was more - _what_?” the captain urges, wiggling impossibly closer as though the answer is hidden in the flush of her cheeks. He’s grinning though, sure that she’s teasing, and he’s proven right when the swordsman peels away from the drool-covered pillow, cringes and licks around her mouth, and then smirks to meet Luffy’s challenge.

“Mmmhm, I was thinking more… flexible.”

“ _Flexible!_ ” he echoes, astonished by her gall. Zee laughs and he does too, unwinding his finger and sweeping back her hair so that she can get a good look at his phenomenal pout. “I was a _rubberman!_ ”

“Yeah?” she says, smirk widening because _of course she knows that_. “And what are you now?”

“ _Insulted_.”

Zee laughs so hard that the only appropriate response is for Luffy to snatch up a pillow and _whumph_ her with it. She shrieks half-mad, half-entertained, and ready for battle as she always has been, but instead of grabbing another pillow she steals his own, roaring _insulted!_ back at Luffy as she clobbers him into the mattress.

They call a ceasefire when they’ve fallen two-thirds off the bed, Zee squished between the bedframe and the wall, one leg stuck straight up in the air, and Luffy flattened over her, their hands holding each other tightly as though to both fight and protect. There’s a pillow trapped somehow between their elbows and knees, and a corner of the duvet has followed them to the floor, Zee still clutching it in an attempt to catch them both, and Luffy smiles as she puffs a twirl of hair out of her mouth.

“You sure know how to wake a girl,” Zee groans, giving her leg a wiggle to find it from within their mess of hands and feet.

“ _Ah_ ,” Luffy says as they carefully begin to detangle themselves. He can’t help but remember Zoro like Zee spread out beneath him, happy and willing to be loved, and his smile slips as he feels an odd, _inexcusable_ sense of longing. “Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry,” Zee teases, yanking up her shorts as she rolls out from underneath him.

Luffy can concede to that - he definitely doesn’t regret the pillow-fight; doesn’t regret loving her this much. But there _are_ things he’s sorry for, and he’s aware that an apology will never be enough to make up for what he’s done.

“Not for this,” he mumbles, and the first mate pauses in her search for a shirt (funny - maybe he should encourage her out of that habit?) to consider his expression long and hard.

“D’you wanna talk about it?” she asks, which is definitely _not_ like Zoro at all; Luffy says nothing, lips pressed together and still half-clambered onto the bed, and so neither does Zee, which _is_ more like the man she had once been.

“Come on then, are we going on this date?” she says instead, wrenching the shirt part-way over her head before cursing - _shit, fuck_ \- and then ambling over to scoop up her bra. Luffy smiles despite himself, amused to see that Zee’s mannerisms reflect Zoro’s in perfect disarray, then perks up as his first mate’s words register.

“Date?” he asks, hurrying over the bed to sit close to her. “We’re going on a date?”

Zee pops her head through the shirt, glances down at his puppy-dog expression, and then rolls her eyes. “ _Well_ ,” she begins, motioning for the band of elastic that Luffy had slipped around his wrist. “I need some weapons and _you_ need a new pair of shorts -”

“Whose fault is that?” Luffy counters, wise enough not to mention that if tying her hair up is supposed to make it look like she _hadn’t_ been snogged for hours then woken by a pillow to the face, then it hasn’t really worked.

 _Spare me_ , her eyes deadpan, and Luffy laughs. Zee huffs and shoves him back onto the bed with a snapped, “Shut _up_ \- so, date?”

The captain rolls over and pleas, _breakfast?_ and then ducks away from Zee’s exasperated sigh (but fond and knowing, too, most importantly) to fish around for his clothes.

“ _Don’t_ tell me you eat as much as last time,” Zee grumbles, and the despair in her voice encourages Luffy to look up to see her eyebrows draw together. “I don’t have the money for -”

“I have money,” he interjects, recalling their argument all those years ago. Before Nami and her accounting and budgeting skills had joined them, and before Zoro had truly trusted the will of his captain, money had been something of an issue between them. Luffy remembers his naivety - seventeen and free he had been, thrusting himself into captaincy without thought for food or supplies. He had been fortunate for Zoro’s street-smarts, but his spirit had been young, carefree, and he had taken advantage of it too, telling the swordsman not to bounty-hunt now that he was a pirate - forcing him to acquire cash using _other means_ instead.

And Luffy had simply laughed and bounced and chased life along until Nami had grabbed him by the ear and spelt Zoro’s frustrations out for him, her words sharp and unkind and her hand even more so.

( _Christ_ , he misses his navigator).

“So don’t worry about it,” he reassures, offering a smile, and Zee grumbles, scowls, and crosses her arms.

“I’m not _worried_ ,” she insists, almost offended by the accusation. Zoro hadn't been one to overthink matters either, but Luffy call recall enough of the events of their former life to know that exceptions had been made.

“Last time -”

Zee intervenes coolly. “Yes, I know what happened last time.”

“I just don’t want you -”

She sighs, “That was a long time ago,” and her eyes dare him to argue.

He doesn’t. There is a lengthy, almost awkward silence, reminiscent of the memories that keep them apart.

“I just -” Luffy begins, softer this time, but Zee cuts him off by throwing his wayward shirt in his face.

“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it,” she says, parroting his words back at him. Her hand waves says, _forget it_ , but Luffy vows not to, wanting to remember every moment between them for as long as he can. “What’d you want for breakfast then?”

“MEAT,” he replies instantly, helpless to withhold his enthusiasm, and this time, Zee’s smile reaches her eyes.

“You got the budget for it?”

“Eh, when has that ever stopped me?” Luffy chirps, wiggling into his clothes. Instinctively reaching for Shanks’ - _Monkey D. Luffy’s_ \- beloved hat when he slips on his flip-flops, a second passes before he remembers that the straw-hat is the one thing from his previous life that he'll probably never have again. Feeling foolish, the captain scratches the back of his neck where the hat should be, hoping that Zee hasn't noticed the blunder.

She doesn't mention it if she has, but she seems troubled in the fraction of time that she cannot hide her expression, memories of the Pirate King’s dearest treasure dimming her smile.

“Food?” Luffy suggests, hoping to distract her, hoping to rid his nakama of the thoughts that plague her, never wanting her to feel such pain at them again. There’s a new world out there that they need to explore (the same world, but not quite), and an entire crew waiting to be reunited, waiting to sail with the Pirate King once again. Where they are he doesn’t know, and whether they’ll remember him he doesn’t know, but Luffy found Zoro just as he found his first mate before, not looking for trouble but _oh_ \- waiting to be taken out to sea.

“Swords,” Zee agrees, and Luffy bounces over with a call of adventure, and clasps the swordsman’s outstretched hand.

(Well, if nothing else, at least their priorities are the same).

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, self-indulgence. Thanks for reading!


End file.
